Reserve Bank of India

Taxpayer Funded Bailouts of Public Sector Banks Will Only Get Bigger

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In the first column that we wrote this year, we said that even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not sure of how deep the bad loans problem of India’s public sector banks, runs. And from the looks of it, the central bank has finally gotten around to admitting the same and doing something about it.

Up until now, the banks (including public sector banks) could use myriad loan restructuring mechanisms launched by the RBI and available to them, and in the process, postpone the recognition of a bad loan as a bad loan. Restructuring essentially refers to a bank allowing a defaulter more time to repay the loan or simply lowering the interest that the defaulter has to pay on the loan. Bad loans are essentially loans in which the repayment from a borrower has been due for 90 days or more.

These mechanisms came under fancy names like the strategic debt restructuring scheme to the 5/25 scheme. Banks, in particular public sector banks, used these mechanisms to keep postponing the recognition of bad loans as bad loans. This allowed banks to spread out the problem of bad loans over a period of time, instead of having to recognise them quickly.

This has led to a situation where the bad loans of public sector banks in particular, and banks in general, have kept going up, with no real end in sight.

We have seen senior bankers say, the worst is behind us, for more than a few years now. And that is clearly not a good sign.

The bad loans of banks jumped to 10.2 per cent as on September 30, 2017, up by 60 basis points from 9.6 per cent as on March 31, 2017. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage.

This basically means that for every Rs 100 that banks have lent, more than Rs 10 has been defaulted on by borrowers. The situation is worse in case of public sector banks. For every Rs 100 lent by these banks, Rs 13.5 has been defaulted on by borrowers. For private sector banks, the bad loans stood at 3.8 per cent.

This has led to the RBI, having to revise its future projections of bad loans, over and over again. In fact, in every Financial Stability Report, published once every six months, the RBI makes a projection of where it expects the bad loans to be in the time to come. And in every report over the past few years, this figure has been going up.

As the latest Financial Stability Report points out: “Under the baseline scenario, the GNPA ratio [gross non-performing assets ratio] of all scheduled commercial banks may increase from 10.2 per cent in September 2017 to 10.8 per cent by March 2018 and further to 11.1 per cent by September 2018.”

In the Financial Stability Report published in June 2017, the RBI had said: “Under the baseline scenario, the average GNPA ratio of all scheduled commercial banks may increase from 9.6 per cent in March 2017 to 10.2 per cent by March 2018.”

In June 2017, the RBI expected the bad loans figure in March 2018 to be at 10.2 per cent. Now it expects it to be at 10.8 per cent. This is an increase of 60 basis points. This revision of forecasts had been happening for a while now. This is a problem that needed to be corrected. The bad loans of Indian banks need to be recognised properly, once and for all. The farce of the bad loans increasing with no end in sight, needs to end.

Earlier this week, the RBI did what it should have done a while back. But, as they say, it is better late than never. India’s central bank has done away with half a dozen loan restructuring arrangements that were in place and which allowed banks to keep postponing the recognition of their bad loans as bad loans.

As per a notification issued on February 12, 2018, a bank has to start insolvency proceedings against a defaulter with a default of Rs 2,000 crore or more, if a resolution plan is not implemented within 180 days of the initial default. The banks will have to file an insolvency application, singly or jointly (depending on how many banks, the borrower owes money to), under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (IBC) within 15 days from the expiry of 180 days from the initial default.

The resolution plan can be anything from lowering of interest rate, to converting a part of the loan into equity or increasing the repayment period of the loan. The banks have a period of 180 days to figure out whether the plan is working or not. If it is not working, then insolvency proceedings need to be initiated.

This particular change will not allow banks to keep postponing the recognition of bad loans, as they have been up until now. One impact of this move will be that the bad loans of public sector banks will shoot up fast in the near future. While that is the bad part, the good part is that now we will have a better understanding of how bad the bad loans problem of Indian banks really is. The farce of every increasing bad loans is likely to end quickly.

In addition to this, the notification has also asked the banks to report to the Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC), all details of borrowers who have defaulted and have a loan exposure of Rs 5 crore or more. This has to be done weekly, every Friday. This will give the RBI a better understanding of the bad loans problem. And with more information at its disposal, it will also be in a position to see, whether banks are recognising bad loans as bad loans, or not.

While this is a good move, it does not solve the basic problem of the public sector banks i.e. they are public sector banks. With these changes made by the RBI, the real extent of the bad loans problem is expected to come out. With more bad loans, more capital will have to be written off in the days to come. This means that the government, as the major owner of public sector banks, will have to infuse more capital into these banks, if it wants to maintain its share of ownership in these banks. And from the looks of it, there is no reason to suggest otherwise. This means that the taxpayer funded bailout of public sector banks, is likely to get bigger in the days to come.

As we have been saying for a while, the government only has so much money going around, and if the taxpayer funded bailouts of public sector banks bailout are likely to get bigger, that money has to come from somewhere.

Where will that money come from? The money will come from lesser government spending on agriculture, education, health etc. That is something which has been happening for the last few years. It will also come from more farcical decisions like LIC buying shares in other public sector enterprises, and companies like ONGC having to borrow money to buy a big stake, in companies like HPCL, with the overall government ownership not changing at all.

As we like to say very often, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The column was originally published on Equitymaster on February 14, 2018.

The Orwellian Economics of Indian Banking

George Orwell towards the end of his brilliant book Animal Farm writes: “There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

Nowhere is this more visible these days than at Indian banks, in particular the government owned public sector banks, and the way they treat their different kind of borrowers. As is well known by now, Indian public sector banks have a massive bad loans problem. This basically means that borrowers who had taken loans over the years are now not repaying them. The bad loans of Indian banks are now among the highest in the world, only second to that of Russia.

The borrowers who have defaulted on their loans primarily consist of large borrowers i.e. corporates, who have taken on loans and are now not repaying them. As per the Economic Survey of 2016-2017, among the large defaulters are 50 companies which owe around Rs 20,000 crore each on an average to the banking system. Among these 50 companies are 10 companies which owe more than Rs 40,000 crore each on an average to the banking system.

These are exceptionally large amounts. Typically, when a borrower defaults the bank comes after him with full force, in order to recover the loan, by selling
assets offered as a collateral against the loan. But this force is not felt by the large corporates. It is felt by the small entrepreneurs who borrow from banks or people like you and me who take on retail loans like home loans, vehicle loans, credit card loans etc.

As former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said in 2014 speech: “Its full force [i.e., of the banking system] is felt by the small entrepreneur who does not have the wherewithal to hire expensive lawyers or move the courts, even while the influential promoter once again escapes its rigour. The small entrepreneur’s assets are repossessed quickly and sold, extinguishing many a promising business that could do with a little support from bankers.”

Given that they have access to the best lawyers and are close to politicians, the large borrowers don’t feel the heat of the banking system.

In fact, the large borrowers given that they are large, get treated with kids gloves. In some cases, the repayment periods of their loans have been extended. In some other cases, the borrower does not have to pay interest on the loan for a specific period. But all this hasn’t really helped and the banking mess continues.

The Economic Survey of 2016-2017 has recommended based on the data for the year ending September 2016 that “about 33 of the top 100 stressed debtors would need debt reductions of less than 50 percent, 10 would need reductions of 51-75 percent, and no less than 57 would need reductions of 75 percent or more.”

This basically means that banks will have to take on what is technically referred to as a haircut. Let’s say a corporate owes Rs 100 to a bank. A haircut of 51 per cent would mean that he would now owe only Rs 49 to the bank. The bank would have to take on a loss of Rs 51.

The Economic Survey offers multiple reasons why haircuts will be required. The first and the foremost is that the borrowers simply do not have the money to repay. Secondly, large corporates owe money to many banks and these banks need to agree on a strategy to tackle the defaults. That hasn’t happened.

Of course, what the Economic Survey does not tell us is that the large borrowers are politically well connected. It also does not get into the moral hazard haircuts would create. Once corporates are bailed out this time around, why would they go around repaying loans the next time around? They simply won’t have the economic incentive to do so.

And finally, the Survey does not tell us anything about why only the large corporates are being treated with kids gloves? I guess it does not need to because that was something Orwell explained to us many years back.

The column originally appeared in Bangalore Mirror on March 29, 2017.

Here is Another Good Joke: New IT Data Shows Only 6 lakh Indians Are Repaying Home Loans

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In yesterday’s column I explained that if official data is to be believed India has only 20 lakh individuals who earn an income out of house property.

To put it simply, as per official data, India has only 20 lakh landlords or 19.95 lakh to be very precise. This number can be inferred from the data for the assessment year 2012-2013 shared by the income tax department last week. Income tax returns for the income earned during 2011-2012 would have to be filed during assessment year 2012-2013.

In fact, there was another interesting data point, in the column. This means some amount of repetition from yesterday’s column, but kindly bear with me. I am repeating this point because of two reasons—a) I thought, it sort of got lost in yesterday’s column. b) I think it is an equally important point which people need to know about.

As per the data for the assessment year 2012-2013, there were only around 26.01 lakh individual assesses who had shown some income from house property. Of this, around 6.06 lakh (or 6,06,046 to be very precise) had shown a negative income.

This negative income amounted to around Rs 3,298 crore in total. This works out to an average negative income of Rs 54,418 per individual. The term negative income is actually an oxymoron. But what it essentially means is that instead of earning any money from a house, the owner is actually spending money on it.

This happens when someone has taken a home loan to buy a home and is paying an interest on it. The Income Tax Act allows the interest paid on borrowed capital (i.e. a home loan) to be deducted while calculating taxable income.

For 2011-2012, in case of a self-occupied home, a maximum amount of Rs 1.5 lakh could be taken as a deduction for the interest paid on a home loan. Individuals in such situation would end up having a negative income from house property.

For a non-self-occupied home, there was no upper limit to the amount of interest that could be taken as a deduction, though a notional rent would also have to be taken into account, if the house hadn’t been put out on rent.

If the interest to be paid on the home loan was greater than the rent earned or the notional rent, then the income from house property would turn out to be negative. Such individuals would also end up having a negative income from house property.

The surprising thing is that the number of such individuals in total is only a little over six lakh. Does this mean that India has only six lakh people who have taken on a home loan to buy a home? The official data seems to suggest that.

But this is simply bizarre. Some simple mathematics clearly shows us that. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) puts out sectoral deployment of credit data. During 2011-2012, scheduled commercial banks gave out home loans worth Rs 41,907 crore.

Multiple newsreports point out that in 2012-2013, the average home loan financed by banks was Rs 10 lakh. I couldn’t find an average home loan number for 2011-2012, and hence will have to work with this.

Let’s assume that in 2011-2012, the average home loan financed was 10% lower at Rs 9 lakh than in comparison to 2012-2013. This essentially means that just in 2011-2012, around 4.66 lakh homes (Rs 41,907 crore divided by Rs 9 lakh) were financed by scheduled commercial banks.

Over and above banks, housing finance companies also give out home loans. Hence, it is safe to say that just in 2011-2012, more than six lakh home loans would have been given out.

Further, home loans would have also been given out even in years before 2011-2012. Hence, how is it possible that only around six lakh individuals have a negative income from their homes, as data from the income tax department suggests?

Something doesn’t really add up here. In fact, as I had pointed out in yesterday’s column, the number of home loan accounts with scheduled commercial banks in 2011 had stood at 47.32 lakhs.

Hence, the data from the Reserve Bank of India is completely at odds with the data from the Income Tax department.

Typically, when people do not declare details to the Income Tax department the idea is to hide income and save on tax. But in this case nothing of that sort is happening. If an individual does not declare in his income tax return that he is repaying a home loan, then he does not get the interest paid on the home loan as a deduction.

One explanation for this might be that many salaried individuals are declaring their home loan details to their employers, getting a deduction, and then not filing their income tax returns.

But that can at best be a very small explanation because the difference between six lakh people declaring a negative income from their house and 47.32 lakh home loan accounts with banks, is huge. And if we consider home loan accounts with housing finance companies, the number is even bigger. Also, the same logic will not work for the self-employed individuals.

So what is a possible explanation for this? One explanation that I can possibly think of is that the home loan has been taken on only as a bridge loan. This essentially means that people have used black money to pay a substantial part of the price of the home and have financed the remaining through taking on a home loan. This logic applies more to the self-employed individuals rather than the salaried class.

By not declaring the fact that they are paying an interest on their home loan, the hope is not to attract attention on their rather expensive home in comparison to the home loan amount that has been borrowed. But then in this day and age of big data, it shouldn’t be so difficult for the Income Tax department to figure out, who has taken a home loan and is not declaring it.

I don’t know if this explanation is correct, but this is something I can think of at this point of time.

To conclude, the Income Tax department needs to look at this anomaly in greater detail. The answers will be very interesting.

The column originally appeared in the Vivek Kaul Diary on May 5, 2016

Here’s a Good Joke: New Income Tax Data Shows India Has Only 20 Lakh Landlords

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In yesterday’s column I had mentioned that only around 26 lakh Indians (to be precise the number is 26,01,777) filed for income from house property under the individual category, for the assessment year 2012-2013.

During the assessment year 2012-2013, income tax returns for the income earned during the year 2011-2012 had to be filed. A total income of Rs 29,927 crore was declared under this category.

Of this around 6.06 lakh individuals showed an income of less than zero from house property. This would primarily include people who have taken on a home loan to buy a house and are repaying it. During the financial year 2011-2012, an interest of up to Rs 1.5 lakh, paid on a home loan, in case of a self-occupied house, could be set off while calculating taxable income.

This meant that an individual repaying a home loan on a self-occupied house, could show a negative income of up to Rs 1.5 lakh when it came to income from house property. These are the individuals showing negative income against their house property. This negative income could be set off against taxable income and the taxable income could bethus  brought down.

Further, the limit of Rs 1.5 lakh applied only to self-occupied property and not on other homes that a tax payer may choose to buy by taking on a home loan. Any amount of interest paid on such home loans can be claimed as a deduction as long as a “notional rent” is added to the income.

We all know that over the last few years the “rents” have been very low in comparison to the EMIs that need to be paid in order to repay the home loan. The rental yield (rent dividend by market value of the home) is in the region of 2-3%.

Even after deducting a notional rent, the interest component tends to be massive during the initial years. Hence, the difference between the notional rent and the interest paid is negative. This essentially means income from house property is negative. Such individuals who own more than one home financed through a home loan, also earn a negative income from their house property. This negative income helps people with two or more homes, claim huge tax deductions.

This “deduction” has been used over the years by well-paid corporate employees to bring down their taxable income. Further, individuals who use this deduction benefit on two fronts—tax deduction as well as capital appreciation.

Even if, the capital appreciation is not huge, such individuals are happy in claiming just the deduction than actually making money from an increase in price. Hence, they may not sell the flat, even in a scenario where prices may be falling and thus prevent a faster fall in home prices.

Getting back to the point, there were only 6.06 lakh individuals in the assessment year 2012-2013 who had an income of less than zero or a negative income from house property. As I said, these are people essentially repaying their home loans. The interest they pay on their home loans can be set off against taxable income.

It is worth asking here that does India have less than 6.06 lakh individuals living in self-occupied homes on which home loans are being repaid? Something just doesn’t add up here. Honestly, this is bizarre.

As a newsreport in The Economic Times points out: “In 2011, the number of accounts was 47.32 lakh, which went up to 47.78 lakh in 2012, with the disbursed amount also increasing from Rs 2.5 lakh crore to Rs 2.6 lakh crore.”

If the banks had close to 47-48 lakh home loan accounts in 2011 and 2012, why are only around 6.06 lakh showing up in the income tax data?

Also, around 19.95 lakh people declared an income from house property in assessment year 2011-2012. This is another extremely low number. What does this mean? It means that the number of individuals in India who are earning a rental income from their homes (real as well as notional) is around 20 lakh. How is that possible?  It means is that there are around 20 lakh landlords in the country, if the data from the Income Tax department is to be believed.

It is worth recounting here something that Akhilesh Tilotia writes in The Making of India based on the 2011 Census data: “India’s households increased by 60 million to 247 million from 187 million between 2001-2011. Reflecting India’s higher ‘physical’ savings, the number of houses went up by 81 million to 331 million from 250 million. The urban increases is telling: 38 million new houses for 24 million new households.”

This means India had 331 million or 33.1 crore houses in 2011. Now compare this with the fact that there are around 20 lakh individuals earning a rental income from their homes. This comparison clearly tells us how low the 19.95 lakh number, really is.

There are two things that become clear here. One, is that many individuals are just buying up homes as an investment and not putting it up on rent. Anshuman Magazine, chairman and managing director of CBRE South Asia Pvt. Ltd., in a 2015 article wrote that “around 1.2 crore completed houses” are “lying vacant across urban India”.

Further, this is a clear indication of the fact that most landlords are getting their rents paid in cash and not paying any income tax on it. It also leads to the question where did these people earn the money to build these houses in the first place?

Here is another interesting data point—Of the 19.95 lakh who have some rental income, around 14.55 lakh have an average rental income of around Rs 60,000 per year or Rs 5,000 per month. This number is very low as well.

The point being a major part of the black money in India continues to be generated in the real estate sector. The general impression we have had up until now is that black money is generated when real estate is bought and sold. Nevertheless, with this new data it is very clear, that black money is generated even when real estate is rented out.

The column originally appeared on the Vivek Kaul Diary on May 4, 2016

Does It Really Make Sense to Merge Public Sector Banks?

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The government of India owns twenty-seven public sector banks(PSBs). It has often been suggested that the government should not be owning so many banks. Many of these banks are very small and hence, they should be merged so that they benefit from the economies of scale.

The situation was summarised by R Gandhi, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, in a recent speech. As he said: “[The] banking system continues to be dominated by Public Sector Banks (PSBs) which still have more than 70 per cent market share of the banking system assets. At present there are 27 PSBs with varying sizes. State Bank of India, the largest bank, has balance sheet size which is roughly 17 times the size of smallest public sector bank.”

Gandhi further said: “Most PSBs follow roughly similar business models and many of them are also competing with each other in most market segments they are active in. Further, PSBs have broadly similar organisational structure and human resource policies. It has been argued that India has too many PSBs with similar characteristics and a consolidation among PSBs can result in reaping rich benefits of economies of scale and scope.”

The first thing that needs to be mentioned here is that most mergers fail. There is enough research going around to prove that. As the Harvard Business Review article titled The Big Idea: The New M&A Playbook points out: “Companies spend more than $2 trillion on acquisitions every year. Yet study after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%.”

Hence, it is safe to say that most mergers fail and it is best to start with this assumption when any merger is proposed. And there is no reason to believe that the story for Indian public sector banks will be any different.

There have been two kinds of bank mergers in India. The first kind is when a bank which is about to fail is merged with a strong bank. The Sector 45 of the Banking Regulation Act 1949 empowers the RBI to “make a scheme of amalgamation of a bank with another bank if it is in the depositors’ interest or in the interest of overall banking system.”

The merger of Global Trust Bank with Oriental Bank of Commerce in 2004 is a good example of this. As Gandhi said in his speech: “Prior to 1999, most of the mergers were driven by resolution of weak banks under Section 45 of Banking Regulation Act 1949. However, after 1999, there has been increasing trend of voluntary mergers under Section 44A of Banking Regulation Act 1949.”

The second kind of merger is the voluntary merger. As far as voluntary mergers go, a good example is the recent merger of ING Vysya Bank with Kotak Mahindra Bank. This merger had the so called synergy necessary for a merger to take place.

As Gandhi said: “One and most obvious has been voluntary merger of banks driven by the need for synergy, growth and operational efficiency in operations. Recent merger of ING Vysya Bank with Kotak Mahindra Bank is an example of this kind of consolidation. ING Vysya Bank had a stronger presence in South India while Kotak had an extended franchise in the West and North India. The merger created a large financial institution with a pan-India presence.”

The merger of Bank of Madura and Sangli Bank with ICICI Bank in 2001 and 2007, and the merger of Centurion Bank of Punjab by HDFC Bank in 2008, are other good examples of synergy based mergers.

But what does the word synergy really mean? One of former professors used to say that: “Since we are all born on this mother earth, there is some sort of synergy between us.” That was his way of saying that synergy is basically bullshit. Once a merger has been decided on then people go looking for reasons to justify it and that is synergy. While that may be a very cynical way of looking at things, there is some truth in it as well.

Nevertheless, author John Lanchester does define synergy in his book How to Speak Money. As he writes: “Synergy: Mainly BULLSHIT, but when it does mean anything it means merging two companies together and taking the opportunity to sack people.” He then goes on to explain the concept through an example.

As he writes “If two companies that make similar products merge, they will have a similar warehouse and delivery operations, so one of the two sets of employees will lose their jobs. The idea is that this will cut COSTS and increase profits, though that tends not to happen, and it is a proven fact that most mergers end by costing money…When two companies merge, the first thing that ANALYSTS look at when evaluating the deal is how many jobs have been lost: the higher the number, the better. That’s synergy.”

If two public sector banks are merged there are bound to be situations where both the banks have a presence in a given area. Synergy will demand that one of the branches be shut down. But given that the banks are government owned something like that is unlikely to happen.

Over and above this, there will be multiple people with the same skill at the corporate level. Will this duplicity of roles end, with people being fired? Highly unlikely.

Hence, the merger of two public sector banks, will give us a bigger inefficient bank. Further, there are very few examples of public sector banks being merged in the past.  So, there is nothing really to learn from.

As Gandhi said: “Recent merger of State Bank of Saurashtra and State Bank of Indore into State Bank of India may be seen as basically merger among group companies. The only example of merger of two PSBs is merger of New Bank of India with Punjab National Bank in 1993. However, this was not a voluntary merger.”

Also, it is worth remembering that public sector banks are facing huge bad loan problems. Many corporates who had taken on loans are not repaying them. In this scenario, if banks are merged without the bad loan problem being solved, we will have a situation where problems of two banks are basically passed on to one bank. That doesn’t make the situation any better.

As Gandhi summarises the situation: “PSBs as a group have not been performing well during the last few years. There has been a large increase in Non-Performing Assets (NPAs). As a part of managing large NPAs, some suggestions have been made that perhaps a consolidation of PSBs can render them more capable of managing such challenges relatively better…Merger of a weak bank with a strong bank may make combined entity weak if the merger process is not handled properly. The problems of capital shortages and higher NPAs may get transmitted to stronger bank due to unduly haste or a mechanical merger process.”

The column originally appeared on the Vivek Kaul Diary on April 27, 2016